NOVA 3/23/11

inquisition:
Galileo spen his life under house arrest after mocking te Pope and church's beliefs.
telescope Lick was 19th century.  60 yrs after Galileo, Newton 1668 Newton designed & built telescope curved and metal mirror.  Avoids the color blurr from refracting telescope.   1727 Newton died.  metal alloy (speculum metal) which tarnishes over time, must repolish it.  in the 1850's a Frenchman coated glass w/ a thin layer of silver.
1839 - Invention of Photography!  Light from a star, split  up, creates colors of the rainbow.  there IS NO unique "center of the universe"  the more space there is b/w 2 galaxies, the faster they recede from one another!
1980's Cal TEch created a 10meter large mirror.  Observatory air must be clear, dry, and steady on Hawaii (made from international collaborations) - Mt. Akea (sp?)  .

Intrafromrometry.  soon we'll be able to study & navigate the Stars via our own computers.
Observing red shifts on SuperNova Stars.
Universe contains much dark matter, universe is expanding faster.

NOVA - HUNTING THE EDGE OF SPACE (Wed. 3/23/11) - the Ever Expanding Universe

57 Trillion miles high of gas clouds, hide the very birth places of stars & planets.  1609 Galileo Galile telescope (far-seeing in Ancient Greek).  Planet simply means the wandering one in ancient Greek! or wandering star.  The evening star is Venus! Mars is glowing red at night.   "The Starry Messenger" written by Galileo.  on Jupiter, we can watch volcanoes spew ash high into space.  Venus has sulphuric ashes.   Dwarf planets made of rock & ice.  The engimatic rings of Saturn, made of several concentric rings.  Saturn is 934 million miles from Earth.  Ice & Rock comprises the the rings of Saturn.  ice salt & ammonia comprises Saturns outer ring. Isaac Newton:  White light is composed of rainbow colors if view through a galss prism and it's broken into the colors of the rainbow.  *Newton used reflecting telescopes instead of refracting telescopes* *Andromeda Nebulae is visible w/ naked eye.

* * Dark Energy(ies)* * is one of the keys to understanding the universe.